Saturday, February 24, 2007

Readership Trends

Since you're here I thought you might be interested in your fellow readers. I'm not shocked, having tracked this over the last six months, but I thought you might be a little surprised.

Traffic is going up steadily each month, this far into February it has surpassed January, the previous best with 1050, by about 400. Blue Oregon drove an additional 80 visitors with a story link (by daily avg). This traffic is coming in from all around the US and the world. I discount the odd word searches that have nothing to do with this site when I evaluate source countries and states. There are some nations showing up for politics that are not "open" to the kind of stuff that goes on here, and they are direct hits - ie here deliberately. One article was linked by a blog in a country where that behavior would cost you freedom if not your life. I find it encouraging, not that these people are reading criticsm of our government, I don't care about that, but that they're getting a concrete example of what we have, here.

Some of you may wonder about the gun reviews, I like doing them. I like sharing them with the progressives (liberals, lefties) who like guns and the folks who like guns. I also have long believed that many guns are very nearly works of art - too bad I'm not a better photog. Cars are here for the same reasons. Here is something I don't believe I've shared with my readers, of my traffic entering by URL the breakdown goes like this: main blog & political articles 50%, guns 40%, various entries 10% - these tend to include old political, specialized, and oops sort of word searches. About 15% of the gun entries go on to politics and best I can tell have provided about 10% of regular readership of full blog from outside OR.

Some tendencies of mine cut down hits from searches, one is my titles. If I were to use the "principals" names in titles I'd get hit more often. I don't write news stories and I'm not trying for an A-list Blog, I like my titles. People get here how they do and that's cool. One reason the guns drive so many hits is that their specific titles place them up Google's list. That specificity can have odd results, my short review of Jon Swift places above his blog, I hope he appreciates the irony of being referenced by a reference to a fictional character's site.

Very early AM hits tend to be foreign nations, most of you regulars come at expected hours, 8-10AM, 12-1PM, 6-8 PM, 10 PM, I sincerely hope your bosses don't mind... OR leads the list by far, followed by CA, after that it gets pretty scattered FL, GA, (heavily guns) MA, ME, NY, IL, MI, MO. UK and CA are leading foreign, S Korea, India, Thailand, Germany follow, a couple very repressive countries, then Australia and Austria, New Zealand, Finland. Some more are pretty isolated hits and mostly word search countries. Universities and Educational Organizations are big hitters, the US House is a regular. Military hits are usually guns, a couple have bled over to politics.

My commenters are a really decent bunch, especially in comparison to some other sites. The couple trolls that were around have left. I'm a pretty fortunate blogger, I have a widely varied, intelligent, polite audience. That's saying a lot. Thanks, I hope this was of interest.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm seeing a lot of the same trends as you. Just this month I'm already at 6,600 visits and this beats January, my previous best, by 800.

I also get a lot of gun hits, along with Illegal Immigration hits. Also lots of hits from other countries, but I'm not sure if they are actual readers or some kind of spam computer. Ukraine, China and Korea make up 5% of my visits.

Do you notice the people from outside the country hitting the same 2 or 3 articles over and over?

Chuck Butcher said...

The foreign hits are all over the place, lots of guns stuff, but many are direct hits to the main Blog. The ones from repressive countries all seem to hit the main.

I've seen no sign of spam hits. I'll have to give your site a visit if it will link off your name.

DA English said...

Well the hits from South Korea are from me. I visit your blog almost everyday (or every other day).

How the heck to you find out how many hits your blog had? I had no idea you could do that.

Not that anyone reads my blog. I just like talking to myself. It proves that I'm crazy.

DA English said...

Chuck,

Do you use feedburner? I just signed up for it. Not sure if it will help me or not, but it's worth a try.

Chuck Butcher said...

sitemeter which is free, though sometimes a PIA. You can go to the bottom of my Blog and find a little multi-colored box, click on it and then click on Home to apply. I don't use any "enhancers," other than Lefty Blogs, Technorati, Orblogs which are aggregators. I figure those who want to read it will find it.

Chuck Butcher said...

oh yeah, da English, you're one of several from S Korea in various regions.

Fred Mangels said...

Hey Chuck: Do you get the daily e-mail stats from Sitemeter, or just check them on the web site?

I like getting the daily report via e-mail but all of the sudden they stopped sending them. I went back and subscribed again but they stopped coming again after a week or so.

Don't know what's going on with that. Wondered if the same was happening to you?

Anonymous said...

From my view, commenter] I never can tell where other comments are from. Naive me I thought all were in Orygone.lol The gun info I like as I know no one into guns. I once had a black powder " Old Navy" i put together from a kit. Whenever the black powder guys showed up to Bull Frog park, in Oregon city, I left...too much smoke for me. The old navy was OK but the pain of reloading soon tired me out, I gave the gun away.
As for politics I'm a fiscal conservative and a social liberal within sanity.social engineering on either side is just wrong. I thought this last national election would awaken both parties as to what is desired by the electite...probably not. My biggest bitch with government is the money issue with schools. I'm so sick of the pandering of politicos to the schools...when is enough enough? Lee Iaccoca said it best to stop the fleecing from easy retirement ; do one of two things: 1-don't hire till a person is at least 30 year old,2- benefits do not start till 65 years old. One or the other makes the system work...and no double dipping.

Chuck Butcher said...

Fred,
I go to the site & check stats, by "detail" and then click on the number (1) or (65) or (x) which displays all the info the meter can pick up. Many dedicated servers have no location (US) and time of day tells where E-W. I get some OR stuff served from WA, I can usually tell. If the counts get much higher that'll have to stop. I only get weekly stats e-mail.

Wow, Kiss, I'd have to write a bunch of articles to begin to touch on all you set out. I'm fiscally conservative in the sense that it needs to be paid for. As for programs, I try to balance public good with expense, for ex. health care, I advocate a single pay system, govt. Tax payments go up, healthcare payment down, present is a fiscal disaster.

As for guns, there ought to be a shooting club somewhere near you. I'm fortunate to have one of the best, including 1000 yd range, separate pistol range, and etc. Powder River Sportsman's Club.

Chuck Butcher said...

Kiss,
On guns for ex. by noon Sun: Norway (1), France (2), Belgium (1), Netherlands (1), Argentina (1), a bunch of eastern states (SE particularly)& etc & AOL which I only get TZ from. Most guns article specific.

I know that you're close enough to HR to be served from there. Portland is #1, Beaverton #2, then a big cluster of Wil. Valley, after that all over OR. I get a lot of traffic linking from Blue OR & Loaded OR, Lefty Blogs, Orblogs, Technorati, pretty much in that order. I have picked up readers from comments on other sites. Because you comment a lot, here & elsewhere I have a fair grasp of who you are, I like to have an idea of who and where, I talk to you people daily.

This article is getting large play, evidently you folks like to have an idea, also.

Tryan Hartill said...

Fred

The same thing happened to me. Had em for a week then they stopped coming. I ended up having to put the icon on my site and check it from there.

Fred Mangels said...

Good to know it wasn't just happening to my, tryan. Thanks.